No Cure for Stupid
by GaruAlpha
Summary: House has to help the friend of a multi-millionare who has a secret he isn't willing to give up.
1. This isn't the Vet

**This particular story takes place shortly before House goes to Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital. The character "Alpha" is an Original character that I tend to use for a lot of things. This takes place in a world were supers exist and are considered fairly common.**

Alpha had just fought Zoolander, one of his more dangerous villains. The guy had a major thing for making people into anthropomorphic animals and creating artificial diseases. He himself was weak though, thankfully enough, so one punch was enough to put the twit down, with the only ill effects to show for it being a bit of dust that got stuck on Alpha's arm when the punch had landed.

Alpha plopped down on the couch in the super base's living room, from his werewolf-like form, he turned back to his human looking self, now that his identity was safe inside of the base. Laying back and relaxing, he grabbed the remote control before flicking on the TV and watching some cartoons. He leaned forward to put the controller down, but as he leaned forward, he threw up on the floor, and started falling forward. Before he lost consciousness, he couldn't help but notice all of the red in the vomit.

Gregory House was doing clinic work, dealing with the day to day problems that he avoided like the plague. There was a young man sitting on the table, fidgeting every now and then. He had come in, complaining about coughing and sleeplessness. Skimming over the paper work, House sat down on a stool and looked him over. Glancing down at the paper while continuing to observe the young adult, he asked, "So, what seems to be the problem here?"

The man fidgeted and said, "I have been coughing a lot lately and haven't been able to sleep. It's been going on for about a week now. Do you think it's anything serious?" He finished while fidgeting with a lighter.

Seeing the lighter, House asked, "Do you smoke?"

A smile plastered on his face, the man responded, "Not anymore, I quit cold turkey eight days ago."

Standing up and reaching for his cane, House lectured the man, "And therein lies the problem; you're going through withdrawal. Give it a few more days and it should go away. " House finished as he stood by the door.

The man asked, "Well, is there anything I can do to get rid of the symptoms?"

Getting annoyed, House responded, "You can wait it out, like a normal person. If you need a quick cure though, you could always take smoking back up, but as a doctor I really shouldn't be telling you that, now should I?" He finished in a sarcastic tone. He walked out the door and headed towards the morgue to see how long he could stall from having to deal with any more patients like that. He succeeded in his task for five seconds before he heard the tell-tale sign of impending work, the sound of clicking high-heels.

Cuddy walked up next to the limping doctor and asked, "Trying to dodge clinic duty, again House?"

Looking around for a convenient topic changer, House answered, "Now why would you think that? I am merely taking a quick walk to get a kink out of my leg so I can do my job to the best of my abilities." He finished in a voice, oozing with sarcasm.

Cuddy handed him a paper and told him, "Well, your walk is over, you have a new case. A very rich benefactor, Carter Slade, has employed your services in the treatment of his friend. Mr. Slade happens to be the owner of SladeTech; they make half the equipment we use in this hospital. If you screw this up, we will lose the contract we have with them and have to get a new supplier. On the other hand though, if you do a good job with this, he agreed to replace and update all of our current equipment, free of charge." She stopped as House continued limping. "Don't screw this up, House, this could really help the hospital."

House waved a hand without looking back, "Yes, yes, whatever, I'll take care of it." He stepped into the elevator and headed up to the room where his newest patient was: one John Moyer, though his closest friends knew him better as Alpha.

Thirteen was putting an IV into John, trying to keep him hydrated. He hadn't woken up since he had come to the hospital and was still throwing up periodically. Foreman was standing near the door way, waiting for House to show up to see what theories they would start with. John woke up while she was doing this and slowly opened his eyes. He saw her and said, "Hey, I have a question."

Thirteen replied, "What?" while continuing to put the IV in.

With a perfectly straight face, he asked, "Was I a complete gentleman?"

Thirteen let a small grin sneak onto her face and said, "Yes, yes you were." Foreman tensed up at the implied interaction between the two.

House limped into the room, and asked the room, "So what do we have here, the friend of a rich man who is vomiting blood? Sounds serious." Grabbing the chart at the foot of the bed he said, "Now lets see here, seventeen years old, a star athlete, no history of prior diseases, never sick a day in your life. Well, at least when you do get sick, you don't do it half-assed."

John smiled and said, "Well, I always give it my all in everything else, why not with getting sick too?"

A smirk on his face House said, "Exactly, that's the spirit. Now, since you don't apparently go to doctors that often, I am going to tell you how this works; you will have symptoms, we will take them into account, and we will see what disease matches them. Then, with any luck, we will make you all better. Think you can manage to just sit there and be sick while we do that?"

Liking the mastery of sarcasm that his doctor expressed, John snickered and said, "I think I can manage that, though I am going to need something to eat, if you want me to keep throwing up." as he grabbed his stomach.

Putting the chart back, House said as he left the room, "No can do, need you to have as little in your stomach as possible to see what's wrong with it." The rest of the team followed him out towards the Diagnostic Medicine room with the whiteboard to see what they would do first.

Moyer just pouted and said to the now empty room, in a very pathetic and whiny voice, "But I'm hungry."

House wrote on the whiteboard, "Hematemesis, Stomach pain," and "Black outs." Capping the marker, he asked his room of minions, the minions being Foreman, Thirteen, and Taub, "Now, where do we begin with what we know?"

Thirteen said, "Hematemesis can be caused by any number of things. We should inspect the stomach first and see if that's the cause or if it's something else."

Foreman spoke up, "But what about the blacking out?"

House responded, "That could be a side effect and not a symptom. Look in the kid's stomach, see what's going on inside there." He looked around the room and saw that they hadn't moved yet, "Well, get going."

John was laying down on the operating table, pretending to be asleep due to the anesthetic they had given him, and also trying to suppress his gag reflex from having a camera shoved down his throat. While he was awake, he managed to learn that the doctor that was using the camera was a former lackey of House at some point, Chase, being his name.

As the camera entered the stomach, Chase said to the room, "Good God." Pulling the attention of the room to the monitor that showed what the camera was seeing. On it was the pink walls of the stomach, but between the pink, there were patches of gray, black, and brown, which appeared completely devoid of life.

John cracked his eye open to see what the fuss was about and saw the picture on the monitor and mentally cursed to himself.

House was standing in front of the whiteboard, which had had "Acute Gastric Necrosis" added to it since the inspection. Taub said from the table, "It could be a form of poisoning, many poisons can cause necrosis."

Foreman contradicted, "Yes, but the kind of things that could cause this kind of damage can only be found at work sites where they require protection to enter."

Thirteen added, "He could have always snuck into an area with the substance."

House started to hobble away towards John's room, "Instead of sitting around here speculating, why don't we just ask him?"

They all followed him out the door and Thirteen spoke up. "Don't you always tell us that the patient lies, though?"

House scoffed and said, "He can't exactly lie if we don't ask now can he?" before stepping into the elevator and hitting the button for the right floor.


	2. That Lying Dog

House walked into the patient's room to see that it had changed greatly in the two hours that he had been out between the beginning of the operation and now. Where as it had been a plain hospital room before, it looked more like a man cave that had, had a few articles of hospital equipment moved into it. In the middle of it all sat a very content looking man with a slicked back hair style and goatee with a suit that looked more expensive than House's motorcycle, sitting next to a moping John in a hospital bed. Seeing the procession of doctors he stood up and said, to them, "Ah, hello, you must be Gregory. I have heard nothing but excellent thing about your work. I expect them to be more than just rumors though. Now, I know that the changes in scenery may be a little extreme, but please, don't allow them to distract you."

House cocked his eyebrow before asking, in a tone that portrayed disinterest, "And you are?"

John snickered in the background at the dismissal of his friend. Composing himself at the easy dismissal of his importance, the man said to House, "I would be the man who brought my friend here to begin with. I am, Carter Slade, owner of SladeTech, also known as Veritas of the Twin River Vanguard."

Rolling his eyes, House hobbled over towards the bed while saying, "Great, not just a spoiled rich man, but a spoiled rich man who likes to play superhero." He sat in the chair Slade had been in not a moment ago. He turned towards John, completely ignored the indignant comments being made by Slade and told him. "Okay, we think you might have some form of poisoning, be it heavy metals or something else we don't know yet. We need you to tell us anything you have done or come in contact with in the last couple of days that wouldn't be considered normal."

John stroked his chin and asked, "When you say normal, do you mean normal for me or normal for you? 'Cause I don't think a guy like you would consider winning a football game normal or being forced into a date with three or four different girls either for that matter."

House just snipped back at him saying, "And it probably isn't normal for a person like you to diagnose a sickness." House tilted his head in thought for a moment before continuing, "That sounded more scathing in my head."

Taub's face was stuck somewhere between shock and disgust when he asked, "You were _forced_ to go on four dates in the last couple of days?"

With the look of a petulant child, John crossed his arms and said, "Don't remind me, freaking harpies."

Foreman then asked the question on everybody's mind, "Are you gay or something?"

John gave him a deadpan look and said, "Wow, really? You are just going to come right out and ask it? No, I am not gay, I just don't like superficial floozies that just want a date because of what I am, not who I am." The part that he didn't mention was that almost all of the dates like this were arranged by other Garu in an attempt to have some more Garu in the world.

House announced to the room, while watching a monster truck rally on the giant screen TV that had been brought in, "Sexual preferences aside, answer the question. What have you been up to in the last week or so, and answer what isn't normal for a normal person."

John started ticking off on his fingers as he started listing what he had done, "Well, I helped Slade work on a new super-suit, tested a teleportation device, got chased by another school's football team, drank some of C.L.O.W.N.'s special Vault, watched Alpha get chased by a werewolf hunter or two-" Slade rolled his eyes at his friend's attempt to hide his secret identity. "Put motion sensor based cherry bombs in the faculty bathrooms-"

House cuts him off, "Okay, this is going to take too long. Can you think of any odd substances that you have come into contact with?"

John nodded and said, "Yeah, just ask Slade, his insurance agent should have a complete list of all the things that got dumped on me in the last week while helping him."

House looked away from the screen and asked, "Anything else?"

"Well, there was a white powder on my shirt. Not exactly sure what that is." He said pointing to the clothes he had came into the hospital wearing.

House looked back to the television and said to himself, "The powder isn't it. If it was, we would all be retching by now." He then addressed Slade, "I am going to need that list of substances."

Slade nodded before pulling out his cellphone and telling his assistant to fax over the paperwork.

House was going over the list of substances and had categorized them, useless, less useless, and least useless. Picking up one of the papers of the last, and smallest, stack, he scanned it for anything that could have caused the necrosis, so far nothing. Of all the substances, not one of them was known to cause necrosis in a person. He looked up at his workers, all of them doing the same as him, looking for a common denominator, a hint, a breakthrough, anything really. "Alright kiddies, what do we got?"

Thirteen spoke up and said, "Nothing on this list matches the symptoms, it has to be something else."

Foreman retorted, "This is everything he has come in contact with though."

Taub pointed out, "Not everything, just everything he came into contact with while with Slade."

House watched the puppets dance before him, bickering back and forth. After a few moments he decided to end it and ask the room, "What do each of you recommend."

Foreman said, "I say we filter his blood, any contaminants would be taken out and his body would then be able to repair itself."

Taub interjected, "I say we take a biopsy of the stomach lining and see what is causing the necrosis."

Thirteen thought for a moment before answering, "I think we should check his house and see if it might be some contaminant there."

House took his time to fling a final glare at the useless stacks of paper in front of him before he said, "That last one is a long shot but do it anyway, in the mean time, biopsy the stomach, if the answer isn't in his environment, it's in his stomach.. Thirteen and Taub take the house. Foreman, go get the biopsy set up."

Taub asked as everybody else left the room, "And what are you going to do?"

House leaned back into the large recliner and responded, "What does it look like? I am going to stay here, observe, and see if his condition changes with prolonged exposure to a high-end entertainment system. Now, skedaddle, you're going to make me miss my shows." He then turned back to the television and started flipping through channels after taking the controller from the multimillionaire.

Thirteen lifted another dirty sock from the floor of John's bedroom before covering her nose with her sleeve and commenting to Taub, "I think we should have brought haz-mat suits, this place should be labeled as a bio-hazard."

Taub picked up a piece of pizza and said, "Well, at least we know that he is a normal teenage boy, I guess. Though, it's a little odd that he gets broccoli on his pizza."

Thirteen looked over at the slice of pizza and said, "That's not broccoli."

Taub then dropped the offending piece of food before wiping his hand on his shirt before continuing to look around. "His family has no dogs, yet his room and the bathroom smells of wet dog, what's up with that?" He then made the mistake of opening the closet door, which resulted in a plethora of practical joke materials falling on top of him. "Little help here?" He asked from his position on the floor underneath the debris.

Thirteen just stood there in shock for a moment, her mind taking in what she was seeing, ranging from simple detonators, to cherry bombs, to superglue. "Well, I supposed he wasn't kidding when he said he rigged the toilets at his school to blow."

"That's great and all, but can you get this stuff off of me?" Taub asked while he tried to stand up, only to fall back down due to a bag of marbles that had spilled.

Thirteen started pulling the objects off of the downed doctor and said, "Well, it looks like we have a bit to catalog."

The next day, after the biopsy, Taub and Thirteen were reading all the labels on the objects that they had cataloged, looking for anything that may have cause necrosis of the stomach. House was staring at the whiteboard, waiting for any of his lackeys to make some form of breakthrough. Foreman walked in with the biopsy report and handed to House and said, "You aren't going to believe this."

House looked at the report and said, "It looks like you biopsied a perfectly healthy stomach. Now where is the biopsy of the patients stomach?"

"That is his biopsy. When they went in to get a sample, all of the necrosis was gone, as if it had never been there." Foreman responded as he took a seat.

"So we have necrosis that's self healing now? Do the biopsy again, double check, it can't all be gone." House said while tossing the file back to Foreman.

"Thought you would say that and already had them redo it. Same results. The necrosis is gone, and I checked up on the patient a little while ago and he seems perfectly fine. He said that there was no more stomach pain, and he hasn't thrown up in hours."

House got up and put a question mark next to the word, "Necrosis" on the whiteboard and continued to stare at it. "Keep him over night, if he shows any signs of regression we will take another look, otherwise we will release him tomorrow."

Thirteen looked up from what she was doing and asked, "You have got to be kidding me. The kid was vomiting blood less than twenty-four hours ago and parts of his stomach were dead and you want to release him?"

House grabbed his cane and started walking out of the room. "No symptoms, no problem. If he wants to go ahead and get better on us, making all of our hard work for naught, who am I to stop him? Release him, first thing tomorrow."


End file.
